As more land has been secured for a proposed underground facility to store Canada’s used nuclear fuel in South Bruce, a local citizens group is saying opposition to the plan is also growing.
On Thursday, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization announced that it had signed more agreements with landowners in the southern Bruce County municipality of South Bruce and shared a map showing the potential deep geological repository site. NWMO has now secured more than 1,500 acres of land north of Teeswater through a combination of option and purchase arrangements, up from the announced 1,300 acres it had agreements on earlier this year.
“This is an important milestone in South Bruce and an expression of confidence in the project,” Dr. Mahrez Ben Belfadhel, vice-president of site selection at NWMO said in a news release. “We are thankful for the continued interest in our land access process, and know there is much more to do as we work toward assessing the potential suitability of the site.”
But the group calling itself Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste is continuing to see growing opposition to the proposal as well.
Group member Michelle Stein, who farms beef and sheep in the area, said Friday that their e-mail list of those opposed to the DGR is growing and requests for signs keep coming in.
“We have got signs from here up to Wiarton and out towards Kitchener,” Stein said. “At last count we had over 700 signs out.
“We are constantly getting requests for more information, stickers and signs.”
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic the group went to over 1,000 households and gathered more than 1,600 signatures from people in South Bruce who were opposed to the DGR.
“That is a significant part of our population,” she said. “The thing we keep going back to is that the NWMO says they will only come to a willing host community, but they will not give us a definition.”
A sign opposing a proposed underground storage facility for used nuclear fuel in South Bruce.
Stein’s group has asked that a referendum be conducted by an independent party to “gauge community willingness” for the DGR, but so far no commitment has been made to such a vote.
“I don’t know how they can drive through the countryside and see all these signs and read the letters in the newspaper and call us a willing community,” Stein said.
The South Bruce location is one of two remaining preferred sites identified by the NWMO, with the other in the Ignace area, northwest of Lake Superior. Feasibility studies are underway for both sites, with the preferred site expected to be announced by 2023.
The aim of the project is to create a long-term storage solution for spent fuel rods, currently stored above ground at nuclear sites.
The DGR proposal would include a $23-billion buried storage vault for used fuel rods and a testing centre for technologies needed for the project.
The project requires 250 acres for facilities on the surface. A specific location as to where those facilities would be sited in South Bruce has not yet been determined, according to NWMO. The estimated footprint of the underground storage area is about two kilometres by three kilometres (1,480 acres), but would be dependent on a number of factors, such as rock characteristics and features and the amount of used fuel to be stored. It would be located about 500 metres below the surface, depending on the rock characteristics at the site.
With the environmental regulatory approval process expected to take a decade, an NWMO timeline has construction beginning in 2033 and taking 10 years, with operation starting in 2043.
The NWMO said in Thursday’s announcement that the milestone of securing the land will allow for its site assessment work to continue. Preparatory work will begin so the organization can begin drilling the first of two exploratory boreholes in April.
“Discussions with local landowners in the vicinity of the potential site will continue over the coming months and years,” Belfadhel said in the release, adding that a key part of the agreements with landowner is that farming will continue to be the primary economic activity on the site.
NWMO has also said it is consulting with South Bruce to develop a land value protection program to compensate property owners if the value of their lands are affected by the project.
